Communicating with Technology: Good or Bad? [Poll]

I've touched on technology and communication a bit in the past. Talking about texting mishaps and how quickly technology has evolved in the past 15 years or so. But it was actually my Summer camp post that inspired this one.

Here's how I made the connection - when I went to Summer camp at the end of the season, we exchanged mailing addresses. There were no email addresses, instant messenger names, or cell phone numbers back then. So if you wanted to keep in touch with someone you had to be pen pals. More often than not you'd exchange a few letters, maybe visit once or twice if you lived nearby and your parents could give you a ride, but I've probably lost touch with more people than I kept in touch with over 20+ years.

But since the Internet, Facebook, texting, and instant messaging, I've been able to re-establish old friendships and get back in touch with people I'd lost touch with. Which is great.

Or is it?

There's also the fact that people who you purposefully didn't keep in touch with, can find you.

Also, we've kind of taken the content out of our communication. More "conversations" these days go like this:

"Sup?"
"nmu?"
"nm"
"k ttyl"

As opposed to the days when we wrote letters and actually had to tell people what was going on in our lives, ask questions, answer questions, and even the fun of eagerly checking the mail to wait for a reply. I had a little taste of those good ole' days when a friend of mine was at boot camp a couple years ago and didn't have email access. As much as I don't like sitting down to write by hand, it was fun writing, getting a response and knowing that the other person was looking forward to hearing from me.

So what do you think, has communicating via modern technology ruined the way we "talk" to people? Vote in the poll below and feel free to leave a comment!